nsulted. I am, therefore, resolved to
become either a great composer, like Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven; a
renowned painter, like Titian, Carrache, or Veronese; or a great poet,
like Homer, Virgil, Shakspeare, Dante, Milton, Goethe, and Racine."

"That is to say," remarked Mrs. Wolston, "that you are resolved to be
a great something or other."

"Decidedly, madam; on reflection, however, as I value my eyesight, I
must except Homer and Milton."

"But have you not determined to which of the muses you will throw the
handkerchief?"

"I thought of music at first. It must be a grand thing, said I to
myself, that can charm, delight, and draw tears from the eyes of the
multitude--that can inspire faith, courage, patriotism, devotion and
energy, and that, too, by means of little black dots with tails,
interspersed with quavers, crotchets, sharps and flats."

"Have you composed a sonata yet?"

"No, madam; I was going to do so, but it occurred to me that I should
require an orchestra to play it."

"And not having that, you abandoned the idea?"

"Exactly, madam. I then turned to poetry. That is an art fit for the
gods; it puts you on a level with kings, and makes you in history even
more illustrious than them. You ascend the capitol, and there you are
crowned with laurel, like the hero of a hundred fights."

"What is the subject of your principal work in this line?"

"Well, madam, I once finished a verse, and was going on with a second,
but, somehow or other, I could not get the words to rhyme."

"Then it occurred to you that you had neither a printer nor readers,
and you broke your lyre?"

"I was about to reproach you, Master Jack," said Wolston, "for
undertaking too many things at once; but I see the ranks are beginning
to thin."

"Beautiful as poetry may be," continued Jack, one gets tired of
reading and re-reading one's own effusions."

"It is even often intensely insipid the very first time," remarked
Mrs. Wolston.

"There still remains painting," continued Jack. "Painting is vastly
superior to either music or poetry. In the first place, it requires no
interpreter between itself and the public;--what, for example, remains
of a melody after a concert? nothing but the recollection. Poesy may
excite admiration in the retirement of one's chamber; your nostrils
are, as it were, reposing on the bouquet, though often you have still
a difficulty in smelling anything. But if once you give life to
canvas, it is eterna